Support and Defend Read Online Free PDF

the steps three at a time. As he climbed he shouted, “Arik! Bomb vest!”
    Y ACOBY HAD MADE IT into his bedroom, where he found his wife tied to a chair in the center of the room, her tousled hair hanging into her face. She looked up at him in the dark.
    “The kids are hiding in the linen closet. They’re fine.” She gestured with her head toward the en suite bathroom near where he stood.
    Arik was relieved that his family was alive, but he needed to get downstairs to help his student. He knelt down to grab the micro-Uzi on the floor next to the dead man.
    As he knelt he heard a noise behind him. He looked over his shoulder up the dim hallway, and saw a young, clean-shaven man staggering toward him. Through the faint glow from the moonlight coming from the bathroom, Arik could see a knife protruding from the man’s upper-left chest, but still he managed to move quickly. Arik spun toward the man, raising his gun as he did so.
    From the staircase behind the man he heard a scream from D, his American student: “Arik! Bomb vest!”
    Yacoby had put the sights on the center of the man’s chest, but knowing he was wearing a vest changed everything. He shifted his aim to the man’s head as fast as he could and, while doing so, he shouted, “Hanna!”
    D OMINIC HAD ALMOST MADE it up to the second floor when a wave of light and heat engulfed him from above. His brain registered the fact he was airborne, he felt weightless for a moment, and now the incredible noise overtook him. He knew he was falling backward; his bare back made glancing contact with the wooden staircase and his legs flew up above him, and he did a reverse somersault and continued his roll all the way down, crashing chest-first through the wooden banister and then flipping to the ground floor, where the back of his head slammed down on the teak floorboards.
    Stunned by the impact, it took him seconds to regain an understanding of where he was and what was happening. He choked on smoke and his eyes burned, but he pushed away the pain and focused on getting back in the fight.
    He squinted in the thickening black air and pulled himself up to his feet, then moved toward the staircase again, but his legs gave out and he dropped onto the lower steps. As he tried to pull himself upward by his arms he looked up and saw roaring flames pouring out of the first floor, and above the flames, the night sky.
    It looked as if the entire roof of the stairwell and hallway had been blown from the bungalow in the explosion.
    Dom slid back to the floor, collapsed unconscious onto his back, fingers of black smoke enveloping his prostrate body.

3
    C ARUSO AWOKE TO JOLTS of pain and waves of nausea, convincing him only after significant delay that he had not burned to death.
    He opened his eyes, looked down, and found himself in a hospital bed. This wasn’t the first time he’d regained consciousness since passing out in Arik Yacoby’s burning home, but each time he only managed to lift his head, to catch a quick glimpse of the ambulance or the hospital hallway or the room he was in, and then drop his head back before drifting off again.
    He didn’t know if this process had been going on for a couple hours or for a couple weeks.
    As his eyes cleared a little more he realized a doctor was standing at his bedside. A dark-skinned Indian with gray hair and a youthful face, the doctor wore scrubs, not a white coat. He took Dom’s pulse, placing his fingers on Dom’s left wrist while he checked his watch. When he finished he looked up at Dom’s face and seemed surprised to find his patient looking back at him.
    “Well, hello, sir. I’m surprised to see you awake. You are still under sedation.”
    To Dom, the doctor’s lilt sounded almost musical, but he wondered if this was just the effect of the drugs in his system.
    The Indian began listing a litany of injuries. “You have suffered a slight concussion. Not serious, but expect headaches for a few days. Maybe weeks.” He